Resurrection of Cuban gay activist Reinaldo Arenas

Dead have no rest. This is the case of Cuban writer Reinaldo Arenas, gay activist died of AIDS in 1990 in the U.S., returning years later to his home country of the hand that might be the only great friend who kept on the island, the researcher Thomas Fernández Robaina.

"That's the Reinaldo I knew," says Fernandez Robaina, who recalled the author of 'Before Night Falls' (1992), 'Mass for an angel', a documentary novel that came out in Havana on Friday at the headquarters of the National Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba, and still no date for circulation in the rest of Latin America.

They were very young and newcomers to Havana in the same province in eastern Cuba at the time both as workers in the National Library José Martí Cuba, and began a friendship that withstood all sorts of contradictions, disagreements, and silences, and, somehow, survived even death.

"I went on the trail of Reinaldo to New York and I found I could make a book of 500 pages, but no sense. Reinaldo spoke so poorly of us all (his friends and acquaintances in Cuba), people thought I was going to do the same, "says Fernandez Robaina.

'Mass for an angel', the government Ediciones Unión, mixing fiction and reality. In the text joins a ceremony to call the spirit of Arenas, testimonies that reveal secrets of their lives and look with light and shadow of authority over a man, he says, become myth.

With a radically different position to the Cuban Revolution, U.S. publicly assumed after his departure into exile in 1980, Arenas was placed in the middle of the political dispute between the governments of both countries and his name has been used for more extreme positions.

However, Fernandez Robaina tried to balance on someone he considers "a brother" from "the most personal and literary." The documentary novel, "while saying things that seem important to me, given my view of Reinaldo Arenas."

On risks of linking facts with fiction biography of the writer born in the rural area of the province of Holguin, about 740 kilometers east of Havana, the researcher believes that it should be "controversial" because it is a style and tax and allows certain freedoms as a writer.

When it comes to Cuban literature, "we must speak of before and after Arenas," said Fernandez Robaina convinced, as he did for the first time in 1963 after reading the original 'Singing from' (1967), the only book the late writer published in Cuba.

"It was something very fresh, poetic, affordable 'and, of course, in this novel there is a militant homosexual drums beating," he says, referring to Arenas and then became an icon of gay culture, which reached its intellectual maturity in the late 60's, a time of institutionalized homophobia on the island.

"There is a Reinaldo Arenas in Havana and other Reinaldo Arenas in the United States," says the writer who tried to reveal the writer in exile.

The total opening oven Arenas in literature and the society came to pass just with his arrival on American soil.

"Reinaldo was not effeminate. He had the style of an English lord and it was uncertain whether he was homosexual. That struggle, as he makes later in Cuba never did. At that time there was a strong gay movement (the island), "says Fernandez.

For the researcher of the National Library, the work of openly gay Arenas might be a limiting factor in Cuba "at any given time because there are people who love literature, but (') for bias does not like homosexuals, and therefore the homosexual literature. "

However, his autobiography, "Before Night Falls', became popular among the public of the island, although it was not published by national publishers. In short, "I counted seven people reading the book on the street, in neighborhoods and different issues," recalls Fernandez amazed.

Although its literature is "unique", rescue and disseminate their work in the field is hindered Cuban for various reasons, not only depend on the willingness of the authorities. "When he dies, he leaves a clause that their books can not be edited in Cuba as long as the socialist system," he reveals.

For Fernandez Robaina, works like 'The amazing world' (1968), 'Singing from', 'The palace of the white skunks' (1975) and his accounts of' Journey to Havana "(1990) could be edited in the island with no problem, but Arenas will end prevents it legally.

"Reinaldo Arenas will be studied in the future as a rare species, not only for its style but for its content," provides the writer, who hopes to see some of the manuscripts of Arenas, publicly available from 2011 on Princeton University in New Jersey.

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